03 - Are mages so rare?

I still managed to play one more game before having to go to work, and won it as well, winning all three of the games I played, a massive win in my book!

'The pleasure of victory is very sweet…' I blithed mentally.

When I went to work I left my S-Eyes off, as I didn't know the danger of using it on the street. My idea is to use it only at work, and only to observe people from afar, as I still don't understand anything about the wizarding world.

I hoped that along the way I might get lucky to see someone using magic so I could copy them, but unfortunately I didn't witness any of that.

Arriving at work I opened the door of the store, since besides the manager, I was the only one who had the key except for the owner and I went to sit in front of the computer that I normally use to write my reports and sales transcripts to send to the owner.

I usually sit by the door waiting for someone to come in and talk to them, but today I just intended to stand further away and watch.

A few minutes later the other staff also arrived and after I used S-Eyes on them, I couldn't feel any Mana coming from them.

'Apparently I'm the only mage here at work.' I thought with a sigh of relief, as I didn't know what would happen if another mage so close to me found out that I had become a mage as well.

After a few hours, when the mall finally started to receive a lot of customers, I got up from my seat and went to the store's entrance to watch the people who were strolling about.

While I was at the door I could hear some staff cracking jokes about how I was acting weird today, but as I knew that they were just jokes I didn't take them seriously as I had something more important to test.

Unfortunately my test didn't have any positive results, of the dozens of people I observed, none of them had magic.

This made me have some theories, one of which was that mages are actually just a small minority among normal humans and that it would be very difficult to find another mage among so many ordinary people.

The other theory was that maybe there is a place where only wizards live, like a country within a country, just like that book series about a young wizard who went to an all-wizard school I read once.

Because of my lack of knowledge, I currently couldn't think of other possibilities, but despite the difficulty I still continued for a few hours watching at the door.

Normally I spent just 20 minutes at the door before coming back and resting for 40 minutes. At least once an hour I would go to the door and watch people walking with my S-Eyes, but after my 8 hours of work and 2 hours of lunch I couldn't find anyone.

'Maybe my assumptions really make sense…' I thought after switching shifts with the supervisor who would take my place.

It was already 18:00, my classes would start in a short time, and so instead of going home, I went straight to campus, since I had already brought my material to work with me.

As I walked around campus, some people waved at me and greeted me, which I responded back with a smile on my face.

During the years I spent studying here I attended a lot of parties, so while I can't call these people friends, most of them I've chatted for a few minutes and we follow each other on social media, the basics of courtesy in a social environment today.

Most of the invites I got were because of how well dressed I always came to classes, as I always came after work, the clothes I always wore were from Adidas, which was already way better than being part of the people who didn't even comb their hair before coming.

Of course, it's not like I look bad, but since I've never bothered to work out, my body has always been a little overweight, which diminished some of the points I got for the outfit.

But now that even this problem has been resolved, I might attract even more attention.

I've never chased attention or sought to be the center of attention, but I've also learned that it doesn't do any good to shy away from attention, especially in a competitive corporate environment, the phrases I heard most from my teachers is 'Enjoy college to build your Networking and don't forget that those who are not seen, are not remembered.'

Because of these phrases I have always been concerned about being well dressed for all occasions.

"Hihi!" I heard a familiar voice. "Why are you wearing sunglasses at this hour?"

With a smile on my face I turned towards the voice and replied playfully. "It's for not seeing your ugly face in such detail."

In my direction there was a man and a woman walking. The two became a couple since their first week of college and have been together for several years now.

They are my friends Luke and Kayla.

"Ugly face? If I was ugly I wouldn't get the best girl on campus in the first week." He said with a proud smile as he ran his hand over Kayla's shoulder.

Kayla just rolled her eyes at him and ignored what he said, before greeting me. "Sup Oli."

From her reaction and how Luke had already come to fawning over her, I soon understood that he probably did or said something stupid that made her angry and now she's ignoring him.

This is nothing new to me, as it happens at least once a week.

"Are you going to Laney's party tomorrow? They said she invited a very famous DJ on Instagram." Luke asked me excitedly.

Of our group of friends, I'm usually the one who gets the party invites, as I'm the single one and in the end I end up taking both Luke and Kayla with me.

At first it wasn't like that, but when people realized that they enjoyed the party for at most an hour before disappearing to do something hidden and never coming back, the invitations stopped coming.

But it's not like people don't like them, during the one hour party they attend they are very nice people, but it's only that they drink a little alcohol and that they can't stop kissing and disappear.

It's not like I worry about it, as usually after they're gone I go out to meet new people, and that's when so many party invites arrive.

The 'Be seen and be remembered' is fully in effect with me.

"Yeah, I plan to go, but I'm depending on whether my boss asks me to work tomorrow." I said pretending to sigh.

This was a lie, my boss rarely asked me to do anything outside of my Monday through Friday shift. In the job interview he wanted someone to work from Sunday to Sunday, but I told him that I could handle everything during the week and that if it wasn't enough then I could go during the weekends.

As I kept my promise, it was hardly necessary for me to go during the weekends.

But my friends don't know that, normally this is the excuse I give when I need to refuse something at the last minute, after all, if the boss says so, who am I to refuse?

The reason I lie about this to them is that with this Mana in my body, instead of going to a party tomorrow, maybe I can spend the night trying to find more information.

I don't want to have to look it up on the internet since I'm going to type in some keyword that beeps at the FBI? But in case I can't figure anything out, maybe I can just live my life with my teleport and my S-Eyes.

"Damn man, you know you're our entrance ticket!" Luke complained.

"If you guys enjoyed at least one whole party, maybe I wouldn't need to be the ticket." I responded with disdain.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw that Kayla had been a little embarrassed when I'd mentioned that, which made me roll my eyes at this perverted couple.

As we weren't taking the same course, our classes didn't match up today, so I went to a room on the second floor while they went to the first after we said our goodbyes.

When I arrived in the classroom a few people greeted me or commented on me wearing sunglasses in class and I replied back with a joke before sitting in the place I normally sit in and took another test.

My Mana had already recharged to 100% again, which allowed me to use my S-Eyes once more while observing the people in the classroom.

As I sat in the back of the room, I was able to look at everyone without them noticing that I was staring at them, of course, not to mention that I had my sunglasses on.

As S-Eyes couldn't see Mana lines through clothing, I focused my attention on places where people's skin was exposed, places like neck, shins, and hands were the most common parts.

Unfortunately, even though almost everyone had already arrived, no one seemed to have any Mana, which left me quite disappointed. I searched all day but couldn't find anyone.

But just before I deactivated my S-Eyes, I saw a person walking through the classroom door.

When the other students saw this person, everyone became quiet and paid attention to him.

Elena Hendrix. From the first day of school she was wearing a mask to cover her mouth, no one ever got to see her mouth as she usually went to some secluded place to eat.

Most of the words she speaks are to answer the teacher's questions, as for the other students, everyone notices that she speaks politely, but she has always kept her distance from people.

She has never been to a party, no one has ever met her outside of college, she has no social media profile, her life is a complete mystery to most students.

Some people even gossiped that maybe she was the daughter of some mob boss, or maybe her father was someone very important in the government.

But that was just rumors, no one had the courage to say it to her face until today because of her aura, a cold aura that despite her politeness didn't let anyone get closer than necessary.

But what surprised me was that when she walked into the classroom, my S-Eyes saw some blue lines running down her hands and legs!

'Is she also a mage?!' I asked myself in surprise.

Paying close attention you could actually see that she was really a mage, but for some reason the Mana in her body was much thinner than mine, calculating by the color of her Mana, currently she was at most, 30% of my total Mana.

This could be because she used up the rest of her Mana before class started, or she really has low natural Mana.

As she doesn't show the slightest bit of fatigue, this adds even more points to the possibility that her base Mana is relatively low.

Normally she arrives in the classroom and goes straight to her seat, but today she paused for a split second at the door, closed her eyes and lifted her nose for a breath, before showing a confused expression and going to sit down as she looked around. Gazing around looking for something.

Seeing this action of hers I was shocked. 'Did she find out that there's another wizard in the classroom?'

I thought about the possibility for a few seconds and saw that it's very likely that it happened, but seeing as how confused she acted, she probably doesn't know who it was.

'Should I go talk to her? As I don't know anything about this world, meeting someone who is also a part of it could be something advantageous for me.' I wondered. 'But what if she has bad intentions...'

During the class I paid little attention to what the teacher was explaining and spent most of the time just thinking about what to do and kept glancing at her from time to time to see if she discovered something, or to see if she used any spells.

But during the entire class she didn't even turn around, as if that hadn't happened in the beginning.

'Maybe I'm too paranoid? She might have stopped to smell someone's perfume that was still in the air.' I tried to calm down.

When class finally ended I continued to watch her.

She is usually the first student to leave, sometimes leaving even before the teacher.

But this time she was strangely quiet in her place.

The other students didn't notice this abnormality and started to leave.

In order not to give in, I also packed my material and got up to leave, even avoiding the row next to her, but as I was passing by, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she had also gotten up.

And she was coming my way!